CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE RIDE.
A soft west wind, issuing as from the heart of a golden vase filled
with roses, met them the instant they turned out of the street,
walking their horses towards the park-gate.
Something--was it in the evening, or was it in his own soul?--had
prevailed to the momentary silencing of George Bascombe:--it may
have been but the influence of the cigar which Helen had begged him
to finish. Helen too was silent: she felt as if the low red sun,
straight into which they seemed to be riding, blotted out her being
in the level torrent of his usurping radiance. Neither of them spoke
a word until they had passed through the gate into the park.
It was a perfect English summer evening--warm, but not sultry. As
they walked their horses up the carriage way, the sun went down, and
as if he had fallen like a live coal into some celestial magazine of
colour and glow, straightway blazed up a slow explosion of crimson
and green in a golden triumph--pure fire, the smoke and fuel gone,
and the radiance alone left. And now Helen received the second
lesson of her initiation into the life of nature: she became aware
that the whole evening was thinking around her, and as the dusk grew
deeper and the night grew closer, the world seemed to have grown
dark with its thinking. Of late Helen had been driven herself to
think--if not deeply, yet intensely--and so knew what it was like,
and felt at home with the twilight.
They turned from the drive on to the turf. Their horses tossed up
their heads, and set off, unchecked, at a good pelting gallop,
across the open park. On Helen's cheek the wind blew cooling,
strong, and kind. As if flowing from some fountain above, in an
unseen unbanked river, down through the stiller ocean of the air, it
seemed to bring to her a vague promise, almost a precognition, of
peace--which, however, only set her longing after something--she
knew not what--something of which she only knew that it would fill
the longing the wind had brought her. The longing grew and
extended--went stretching on and on into an infinite of rest. And as
they still galloped, and the light-maddened colours sank into smoky
peach, and yellow green, and blue gray, the something swelled and
swelled in her soul, and pulled and pulled at her heart, until the
tears were running down her face: for fear Bascombe should see them,
she gave her horse the rein, and fled from him into the friendly
dusk that seemed to grade time into eternity.
Suddenly she found herself close to a clump of trees, which overhung
the deserted house. She had made a great circuit without knowing it.
A pang shot to her heart, and her tears ceased to flow. The night,
silent with thought, held THAT also in its bosom! She drew rein,
turned, and waited for Bascombe.
"What a chase you've given me, Helen!" he cried, while yet pounding
away some score of yards off.
"A wild-goose one you mean, cousin?"
"It would have been if I had thought to catch you on this ancient
cocktail."
"Don't abuse the old horse, George: he has seen better days. I would
gladly have mounted you more to your mind, but you know I could
not--except indeed I had given you my Fanny, and taken the old horse
myself. I have ridden him."
"The lady ought always to be the better mounted," returned George
coolly. "For my part, I much prefer it, because then I need not be
anxious about whether I am boring her or not: if I am, she can run
away."
"You cannot suppose I thought you a bore to-night. A more sweetly
silent gentleman none could wish for squire."
"Then it was my silence bored you.--Shall I tell you what I was
thinking about?"
"If you like. I was thinking how pleasant it would be to ride on and
on into eternity," said Helen.
"That feeling of continuity," returned George, "is a proof of the
painlessness of departure. No one can ever know when he ceases to
be, because then he is not; and that is how some men come to fancy
they feel as if they were going to live for ever. But the worst of
it is that they no sooner fancy it, than it seems to them a probable
as well as delightful thing to go on and on and never cease. This
comes of the man's having no consciousness of ceasing, and when one
is comfortable, it always seems good to go on. A child is never
willing to turn from the dish of which he is eating to another. It
is more he wants, not another."
"That is if he likes it," said Helen.
"Everybody likes it," said George, "--more or less."
"I am not so sure of EVERYbody," replied Helen. "Do you imagine that
twisted little dwarf-woman that opened the gate for us is content
with her lot?"
"No, that is impossible--while she sees you and remains what she is.
But I said nothing of contentment. I was but thinking of the fools
who, whether content or not, yet want to live for ever, and so, very
conveniently, take their longing for immortality, which they call an
idea innate in the human heart, for a proof that immortality is
their rightful inheritance."
"How then do you account for the existence and universality of the
idea?" asked Helen, who had happened lately to come upon some
arguments on the other side.
But while she spoke thus indifferently she felt in her heart like
one who wakes from a delicious swim in the fairest of rivers, to
find that the clothes have slipped from the bed to the floor:--that
was all his river and all his swim!
"I account for its existence as I have just said; and for its
universality by denying it. It is NOT universal, for _I_ haven't
it."
"At least you will not deny that men, even when miserable, shrink
from dying?"
"Anything, everything is unpleasant out of its due time. I will
allow, for the sake of argument, that the thought of dying is always
unpleasant. But wherefore so? Because, in the very act of thinking
it, the idea must always be taken from the time that suits with
it--namely, its own time, when it will at length, and ought at
length to come--and placed in the midst of the lively present, with
which assuredly it does not suit. To life, death must be always
hateful. In the rush and turmoil of effort, how distasteful even the
cave of the hermit--let ever such a splendid view spread abroad
before its mouth! But when it comes it will be pleasant enough, for
then its time will have come also--the man will be prepared for it
by decay and cessation. If one were to tell me that he had that
endless longing for immortality, of which hitherto I have only heard
at second hand, I would explain it to him thus:--Your life, I would
say, not being yet complete, still growing, feels in itself the
onward impulse of growth, and, unable to think of itself as other
than complete, interprets that onward impulse as belonging to the
time around it instead of the nature within it. Or rather let me
say, the man feels in himself the elements of more, and not being
able to grasp the notion of his own completeness, which is so far
from him, transposes the feeling of growth and sets it beyond
himself, translating it at the same time into an instinct of
duration, a longing after what he calls eternal life. But when the
man is complete, then comes decay and brings its own contentment
with it--as will also death, when it arrives in its own proper
season of fulness and ripeness."
Helen said nothing in reply. She thought her cousin very clever, but
could not enjoy what he said--not in the face of that sky, and in
the yet lingering reflection of the feelings it had waked in her. He
might be right, but now at least she wanted no more of it. She even
felt as if she would rather cherish a sweet deception for the
comfort of the moment in which the weaver's shuttle flew, than take
to her bosom a cold killing fact.
Such were indeed an unworthy feeling to follow! Of all things let us
have the truth--even of fact! But to deny what we cannot prove, not
even casts into our ice-house a spadeful of snow. What if the warm
hope denied should be the truth after all? What if it was the truth
in it that drew the soul towards it by its indwelling reality, and
its relations with her being, even while she took blame for
suffering herself to be enticed by a sweet deception? Alas indeed
for men if the life and the truth are not one, but fight against
each other! Surely it says something for the divine nature of him
that denies the divine, when he yet cleaves to what he thinks the
truth, although it denies the life, and blots the way to the better
from every chart!
"And what were you thinking of, George?" said Helen, willing to
change the subject.
"I was thinking," he answered, "let me see!--oh! yes--I was
thinking of that very singular case of murder. You must have seen it
in the newspapers. I have long had a doubt whether I were better
fitted for a barrister or a detective. I can't keep my mind off a
puzzling case.--You must have heard of this one--the girl they found
lying in her ball-dress in the middle of a wood--stabbed to the
heart?"
"I do remember something of it," answered Helen, gathering a little
courage to put into her voice from the fact that her cousin could
hardly see her face. "Then the murderer has not been discovered?"
"That is the point of interest. Not a trace of him! Not a soul
suspected even!"
Helen drew a deep breath.
"Had it been in Rome, now," George went on. "But in a quiet country
place in England! The thing seems incredible! So artistically
done!--no struggle!--just one blow right to the heart, and the
assassin gone as if by magic!--no weapon dropped!--nothing to give a
clue! The whole thing suggests a practised hand.--But why such a one
for the victim? Had it been some false member of a secret society
thus immolated, one could understand it. But a merry girl at a
ball!--it IS strange! I SHOULD like to try the unravelling of it."
"Has nothing then been done?" said Helen with a gasp, to hide which
she moved in her saddle, as if readjusting her habit.
"Oh, everything--of course. There was instant pursuit on the
discovery of the body, but they seem to have got on the track of the
wrong man--or, indeed, for anything certain, of no man at all. A
coast-guardsman says that, on the night or rather morning in
question, he was approaching a little cove on the shore, not above a
mile from the scene of the tragedy, with an eye upon what seemed to
be two fishermen preparing to launch their boat, when he saw a third
man come running down the steep slope from the pastures above, and
jump into the stern of it. Ere he could reach the spot, they were
off, and had hoisted two lugsails. The moon was in the first of her
last quarter, and gave light enough for what he reported. But, when
inquiries founded on this evidence were made, nothing whatever could
be discovered concerning boat or men. The next morning no
fishing-boat was lacking, and no fisherman would confess to having
gone from that cove. The marks of the boat's keel, and of the men's
feet, on the sand, if ever there were any, had been washed out by
the tide. It was concluded that the thing had been pre-arranged and
provided for, and that the murderer had escaped, probably to
Holland. Thereupon telegrams were shot in all directions, but no
news could be gathered of any suspicious landing on the opposite
coast. There the matter rests, or at least has rested for many
weeks. Neither parents, relatives, nor friends appear to have a
suspicion of anyone."
"Are there no conjectures as to motives?" asked Helen, feeling with
joy her power of dissimulation gather strength.
"No end of them. She was a beautiful creature, they say,
sweet-tempered as a dove, and of course fond of admiration--whence
the conjectures all turn on jealousy. The most likely thing seems,
that she had some squire of low degree, of whom neither parents nor
friends knew anything. That they themselves suspect this, appears
likely from their more than apathy with regard to the discovery of
the villain. I am strongly inclined to take the matter in hand
myself."
"We must get him out of the country as soon as possible," thought
Helen.
"I should hardly have thought it worthy of your gifts, George," she
said, "to turn police-man. For my part, I should not relish hunting
down any poor wretch."
"The sacrifice of individual choice is a claim society has upon each
of its members," returned Bascombe. "Every murderer hanged, or
better, imprisoned for life, is a gain to the community."
Helen said no more, and presently turned homewards, on the plea that
she must not be longer absent from her invalid.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
